Memory

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Memory
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Considering memory

• Be prepared to interpret, or share your
  perspectives on the following quotes.
• Whereas all living species have a past, only
  humans have a history.
• One never steps into the same stream of
  consciousness twice.
• Most of our memories are really about the
  future.
• We are the sum of our memoriesChange your
  memory and change your identity.
• A memory is more atmospheric than accurate, more
  an evolving fiction than a sacred text.

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Lets check your memory

• On a sheet of paper, name the 7 Dwarves
• Sleepy, Dopey, Grumpy, Sneezy, Happy, Doc,
  Bashful
• Was this activity easy or hard?
• What factors affect our memory?

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The Memory ProcessThree Steps

• Encoding
• Processing of info into memory system (typing on
  a computer)
• Storage
• Retention of encoded material over time (to hit
  save)
• Retrieval
• Getting the info out of storage (opening a file)

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Encoding, storage or retrieval??

• Continuing to pronounce nuclear as nucular
• A failure of which?

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Three Stage Processing Model(one of two major
theories on memory)

• Sensory Memory
• Short-Term Memory
• Long-Term Memory

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Sensory Memory

• Immediate recording of sensory info
• Split second holding tank
• Most stimulus not encoded- Why?
• Selective Attention
• Sensory Memory registered as
• Iconic (split second vanishing photograph)
• Echoic (4 second sounds)

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Short-Term MemoryAKA Working Memory

• Memory that holds a few items briefly.
• Limit Seven digits/ items (plus or minus 2)
• Info is stored into long-term, or forgotten.
• Lasts 3-12 seconds
• Short-Term, or Working Memory has 3 parts
• Acoustic codes
• Visual Codes
• Semantic Codes

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Long-Term Memory

• The relatively permanent and limitless storehouse
  of the memory system.

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Flashbulb MemoryException to 3 Stage theory

• An extreme emotional moment or event
• Somehow branded into Long-Term Memory
• Where were you when?
• 1. You heard about 9/11?
• 2. You had your first kiss?
• 3. You had your first car accident?

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Encoding

• We encode info in two ways
• Automatic Processing
• Effortful Processing

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Encoding

• Automatic Processing
• Unconscious encoding
• Location, time and frequency
• Retracing steps to find your keys
• Also becomes automatic with practice
• Driving to a friends house

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Encoding

• Effortful Processing
• Attention / conscious effort
• Studying for a test
• Through rehearsal, Effortful can become automatic

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Ways of Encoding (activity 9.3)

• Semantic
• encoding of meaning
• Acoustic
• Encoding of sound
• Visual
• Encoding of picture images

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Which is most effective?
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Factors that Influence Encoding

• Spacing Effect
• Encode info better if in increments over time
• Serial Positioning Effect
• Tendency to recall best the first and last items
  in a list.
• Primacy Effect Remember first words, items
• Recency Effect Remember last items, words
• Next-In-Line Effect
• Dont remember what someone has said if we are
  next
• Self-Reference Effect
• We encode better when issue relates to us

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With a partner

• List the U.S. presidents.

Washington Taylor Harrison Eisenhower
J.Adams Fillmore Cleveland Kennedy
Jefferson Pierce McKinley L.Johnson
Madison Buchanan T.Roosevelt Nixon
Monroe Lincoln Taft Ford
JQ Adams A.Johnson Wilson Carter
Jackson Grant Harding Reagan
Van Buren Hayes Coolidge Bush
Harrison Garfield Hoover Clinton
Tyler Arthur FD.Roosevelt Bush Jr.
Polk Cleveland Truman Obama
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Encoding StrategiesCan enhance memory

• Mnemonic Devices
• Any learning technique that aids memory
• uses imagery, semantics to remember
• Acronyms
• Parentheses, exponents, multiplication, division,
  addition, subtraction
• Please excuse my dear aunt Sally.

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Mnemonic Devices

• Peg-Word System
• Assign each item to a number or
• Weave a story matching each item / word to a
  number. (Rhyming also helpful)

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Mnemonic Devices

• Chunking
• Organizing items into familiar, manageable units.
• Memorize these numbers-
• 1-4-9-2-1-7-7-6-1-8-1-2-1-9-4-1
• How bout now?
• 1492, 1776, 1812, 1941

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Mnemonic Devices

• Key Word System
• Term Key Word Mental Picture
• Brocas Area Tom Brokaw News cast (talking)
• Parietal Lobe Paraná biting your toe
• Amygdala Amy Old Psycho girlfriend
  Fear
• Hippocampus ???? ?????

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Mnemonic Devices

• Loci (Location) 500 BC.- Simonides
• Imagine a location (house etc.)
• Imaginary tour each location paired with
  specific item

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Choose any mnemonic device (60 seconds)

• Ham
• Pencil
• turkey
• pen
• Check book
• detergent
• football
• glasses
• globe
• Brother
• Laundry
• Map
• Scrabble
• Jeopardy
• pizza

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Storage

• 3 Stage Process of Memory Review

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Storage and Sensory Memory

• Iconic
• visual snapshot of great detail
• lasts only about a second if dont focus on it
• echoic
• sounds lasts three to four seconds (or last
  few words) if dont encode

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Storage and Sensory Memory

• George Sterlings Experiment1960
• Flash of screen 1/20 second
• Subjects recalled about ½ of letters
• 3 tones top, middle, bottom played immediately
  after visual
• Subjects could identify all three
• All nine letters available for recall- only for a
  moment

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Storage and Short-Term Memory

• Lasts usually between 3 to 12 seconds.
• Limit 7 (plus or minus two) chunks of
  information.
• We recall digits better than letters.

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Storage and Long-Term Memory

• long-term memory no known limits
• Rajan recited 31,811 digits of pi.(3hrs. 49
  min. / or 3.5/second!)
• How? Rhythmic memory melodic or jarring- taps
  feet, sways right / left
• At 5 years old, memorized the license plates of
  parents guests (about 75 cars in ten minutes).
  He still remembers the plates to this day.
• Numbers only average with names, words

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Shereshevskii 1920s

• Short term memory 70 items
• Forward / Backward / 15 years
• Asylum went mad 15 minutes / 5 years all
  memories ran together

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Long-Term Memory

• Remember There is no one single compartment for
  memory in our brain.
• Long Term-Potentiation (LTP)
• Leading Theory for LTM
• Neural networks strengthen memory
• Neural connections gradually strengthen through
  rehearsal over time (memory strengthened)
• Nerve cells genes produce synapse strengthening
  proteins /enabling LTM formation

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Stress and Memory

• Stress can release hormones that assist in LTM
• Stress can also inhibit effective encoding for
  memory

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Types of LTM
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The Hippocampus

• Critical to memory (injury impairment)
• Left Verbal memory
• Right Visual / Locations
• If Library our brain
• Then hippocampus librarian
• Processes LTM, then stores elsewhere in cerebral
  cortex
• Examples
• Facial recognition temporal lobe
• Landscapes parietal lobe
• Socializing frontal lobe
• Parallel processing for rich mosaic of memory

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Amygdala

• Emotional memories
• Images, smells, sounds
• Examples?
• Hippocampus and Amygdala work together to form
  LTM
• Hippo conscious memory of event
• Amygdala emotional memory from the senses

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Retrieval

• Recall
• Versus
• Recognition
• Whats the Difference?

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Retrieval Cues(Aid memory..)

• Memory web of associations
• Priming strand or web of associations that
  leads to a specific memory

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Priming Effect (2 types)

• Repetition Priming

• Semantic Priming
• A house divided against itself cannot stand..
• Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not
  for themselves
• With malice toward none, with charity for all,
  with firmness in the right as God gives us to see
  the right, let us strive on to finish the work we
  are in

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Factors that Influence Retrieval

• Context effect
• Retrieval is more effective when retrieving it in
  same location as experienced it
• Tip-Of-the-Tongue Effect (TOT)
• Temporary inability to retrieve specific name or
  information.
• Usually remedied by semantic cues

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What is déjà vu?

• Eerie sense that you have experienced something
  before
• Explanation current situation cues past
  experiences that are very similar but not the
  same (your mind gets confused.)

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Other explanations.

• déjà vu
• Biological perspective sensory input follows
  several different pathways to higher processing
  centers of brain thus one arrives milliseconds
  before another separate copies of same
  experience
• Perceptual experience can be split into two parts
  sense of two different experiences (selective
  attention)
• Implicit familiarity without explicit
  recollection

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Conditions that Affect Memory

• Mood-Congruent Theory
• The tendency to recall memories consistent with
  our current mood
• State-Dependent Theory
• Recalling events encoded while in a particular
  state of consciousness.
• Example If you hide money while your drunk, you
  are more likely to remember where you hid it when
  you are intoxicated.

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Conditions that Affect Memory

• Pollyanna Principle
• We tend to remember pleasant experiences over
  negative ones
• Before, more efficiently, more accurately
• Why?
• We seek out positive experiences
• Faster fading of negative experiences healthy
  coping processes in memory
• Mild depression negative and positive
  experiences fade evenly

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Forgetting

• Forgetting isnt the absence of remembering
  its memorys ally, a device that allows the
  brain to stay agile and engaged.
• Diane Ackerman, An Alchemy of Mind, p. 89

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Three ways we forget

• Encoding Failure
• Storage DecayRetrieval Failure

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Which is the real penny?
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Encoding Failure

• Dont encode what we dont need.
• No encoding / no LTM.

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Storage Decay

• Memory storage decays over time
• Lack of rehearsal accelerates decay
• Ebbinghauss forgetting curve
• Steep decline of retention over first three days,
  then levels off

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Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve
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Retrieval Failure

• 2 Types (Be careful hereits tricky..)
• Proactive Interference
• New info is messed up by the old info
• vs.
• Retroactive Interference
• Old info is messed up by new learning

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Which type of retrieval failure?
When you finally remember this years locker
combination, you forget last years.
If you call your new girlfriend your old
girlfriends name.
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Retrieval Failure

• REPRESSION
• psychoanalytic theory- Freuds theory of
  repression
• We push away uncomfortable memories
• Contradicts theory that emotions / stress
  hormones strengthen memories

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How much of our experience do we remember?
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The truth about memory..

• Memories bend and change over time, and are often
  inaccurate!!
• Youngest and oldest (around 5 and 75) are most
  susceptible
• (Frontal lobe matures slowly and and decays
  quickly)
• Research studies
• Elizabeth Loftus (over 200 experiments)
• How wording influences our memory
• Cornell University- Space Shuttle Disaster
• Recollections on day after and three years later
• 2/3 were totally wrong as to who with, where etc..

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Misinformation EffectWording affects our memory

• About how fast were the vehicles going when they
  smashed into each other?
• Or
• When they ran into each other?

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Source Amnesia

• Forgetting the source of a memory
• (Where did I hear that?)
• One of the frailest parts of our memory

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Types of Amnesia

• Anterograde Amnesia
• Remember everything before the accident, but not
  after.
• Often TBI (part of brain?)
• Retrograde Amnesia
• Remember everything after the incident, but not
  before.

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Which type of amnesia?